


Triptych

by MercuryGray



Category: Dunkirk (2017)
Genre: Aftermath, Family, Gen, Men Crying, Mother-Son Relationship, Post-Canon, Returning Home
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 15:23:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13192953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryGray/pseuds/MercuryGray
Summary: One scene from three angles: The Dawson men return home.





	Triptych

It was half past nine when the door finally opened.

She’d been waiting for them since suppertime, supper long since left to cool and congeal on the stove. She’d cleaned the entire kitchen, dusted and adjusted the whole front room, gone through her mending basket twice.

She’d too much energy to read (she’d tried, the same page, over and over, but her mind wasn’t her own.) and too little attention to knit (she’d dropped and snarled ten stitches before giving up, her hand shaking while she looked, for the tenth time, at the clock.) and was too self conscious of the first two conditions to pop ‘round to the neighbors to see if anyone knew where they had gone.

(She wouldn’t worry like this if she’d never lost one. But she had.)

It was half past nine, and the door finally opened, and she sprang from her chair like a jack-in-the-box, rushing to the door.

Peter’s jumper smelled of petrol. She stood in the hall, and held her son close for a long, long time and did not quite care how he felt about it.

 

 

* * *

 

It was half past nine when they arrived home. The line of soldiers coming off of the Moonstone had seemed never-ending, an entire army packed into his father's little boat. Where had they kept them all?

The deck needed sluicing, but his father took his arm as he reached for the handle of the closet where the mop was kept. "Best we were off," he said softly. "Your mother will worry."

His mother! "And..." His eyes tracked to the pile of bloodied rags, words failing him. And George?

"The police will handle it," his father assured him, a hand on his arm. "Your mother will be waiting."

Just like George's mother, he wanted to say, but he knew his father was right, that Mrs. Dawson would be waiting, that she'd be worried, and that he, Peter Dawson, could not deliver the news of George's death to Mrs. Mills. He could only go tell his own mother that he was alive.

It was half past nine, and his mother made a sound like a wounded animal when he came in, and cried into his shirt, and the only thing he could do was hold her close and let her, trying not to think of other lost sons until his eyes were wet with the trying.

* * *

 

It was half past nine when the day finally caught up to him.

He left his hat and coat on a hook by the door, and his shoes near the closet, and Cora out in the hall crying and fussing over Peter (and Peter allowing himself to be cried and fussed over), and made his way to the back bedroom, no different from when he'd left this morning.

He'd tried to towel off his hands before they'd left the boat, but there was still oil around his fingernails, embedded in his skin. His coat and jumper had smelled of burning things.

He took off his watch, the surface somehow slightly oily, and laid it on the dresser beside a few framed photos - their wedding picture, David and Peter's baby photos,  
David in his dress uniform. Amos Dawson could not help but see the blue eyes of the airman from today in his son's face, the same fair hair, the same smile.

And the day broke on him like a wave, and knocked him over, and pulled him under.

It was nearly ten when his wife found him in the bedroom, hunched on the side of the bed with David's photograph, silently weeping.

**Author's Note:**

> We never see Mrs. Dawson in Dunkirk. She's there, invisibly; her menfolk are well turned out and well dressed, without a patch or an un-ironed pair of pants between them, and her house (the little we see of it) is clean. Just like her husband, she probably spent a good deal of time thinking about her sons (both the living and the dead) during the course of the movie - and unlike her husband, she had no way of knowing if Peter would make it.
> 
> We also never see Peter's older brother, the unnamed pilot who flew Hawker Hurricanes and who was shot down and died. He's also invisibly present in the film - in the anguish of his father, trying to save another parent from experiencing the same heartache he does, in the caution of his brother. 
> 
> Anyway, I thought I'd like to give both of them a little bit of screentime.


End file.
